New Games! 1/26/2018

Based on the critically-acclaimed TV series, Breaking Bad: The Board Game propels you into the treacherous underbelly of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Will you play as a member of one of the criminal factions (Heisenberg, Los Pollos Hermanos, or the Juarez Cartel), trying to amass a fortune by manufacturing the biggest stash of Blue Sky while eliminating your rivals? Or will you join the ranks of the Drug Enforcement Administration, ready to slap the cuffs on the lawbreakers who would dare peddle their poison in your city?

In more detail, when playing a criminal faction, your goal is to produce Blue Sky, then sell the quantity needed to win before your opponents can. You can also win the game by taking out all of your opponents by using cards to bomb, shoot, or otherwise eliminate them. As the DEA agent, your goal is to seize the criminal factions’ labs (by playing DEA Raid cards). You can also win the game by taking out all of your opponents, either by killing them or putting them in jail.

VENGEANCE

Step into the shoes of a hero that has been bashed and tortured by one or more of the four gangs in the game. You win by building up your hero, scouting gang dens to find the baddies who wronged you, then taking bloody revenge through action-packed fight sequences made up of dice based puzzles.

Vengeance alternates between montage turns and fight turns. In montage turns, players heal and upgrade their heroes through new abilities and items. They also go out scouting gang dens to find the bosses who wronged them and take revenge on them in the fight turn.

The fight turn is the heart of the game. Players pick one of the scouted gang dens containing a boss who has wronged them and burst into the gang den to exact bloody revenge. Players gain VPs for killing the boss, clearing the den from all the minions or, for maximum points, both. Players have three turns to do this and get out of the den in one piece.

Fights are basically dice-based puzzles. In each round of the fight, players roll a set of dice and decide the order in which they play the rolled results. Upgrade skills and items allow players to swap die-results for others or string together a number of results to perform enemy-slapping combos. Upgrades thus work towards mitigating the luck of the die-roll, giving players more control over their Fight actions.

Players score points by killing bosses who wronged them, i.e., matching the figure on their vengeance card with one of the face down Boss cards attached to each den and/or by clearing all minions of a gang which matches the color of a vengeance card they have in play.

At the end of the game players also score bonus victory points through three mission cards in play.

BREWIN’ USA

Brewin’ USA is a thematic Eurogame in which players control a start-up brewery at the inception of the craft beer revolution. Players will need to collect key ingredients, launch a product line of “liquid gold” craft beer, and strategically compete for regional control across the nation.

A game turn consists of three phases: Ingredient Auction, Launching Beers, and Resolving any Brewfests. During the Auction Phase, players compete for the ingredient cards needed to launch their beer via a turn-based bidding system. Any bids entered are then turned into craft beer “market demand” that is dispersed at the discretion of the players making each play through unique and delivering many interesting decisions. Each beer card has an ingredient recipe that must be satisfied before the beer can be brewed and one of six different beer styles that tailor better to certain cities which will be key when competing for regional control. When a player brews a beer, they must choose to control an open city location or challenge an controlled city to a brewfest where the winner of the brewfest will control the city. If any player controls the most cities in a region at the end of the game, then they control the region. The game ends when the first player brews three beers, and points are then totaled counting beer quality and reputation on cities and any regions you control.

Brewin’ USA aims to deliver a quick strategic euro experience paired with a very approachable theme and thrives on its player interaction. The game play revolves around Beer Coaster tiles delivering new twists on fun mechanisms and components including 105 Bottle caps to be used for both money and victory points. The player interaction comes from the Brewfest event in the game, which ramps us as more players grow their craft beer product lines and are chomping to establish their control in the regions.

DOKMUS

Lead your tribe to glory on the island of Dokmus and become a legend!

Dokmus is a board game for 2-4 players. Your goal is to lead an expedition to the island of Dokmus, the ancestral god of your tribe. The island is represented by eight double-sided map pieces. During set-up, you randomize which side of each map piece is up and place them in a 3×3 grid so that the middle place is left empty.

The island is guarded by five Guardians, which are represented by Guardian cards. On each turn, players draft the Guardian cards so that each player gets the help of one Guardian. The Guardian cards decide turn order and they also give you special powers. With them, you can move and rotate, move your tokens, or gain first player marker for next turn.

On your turn, you have three tokens to use. You use tokens to spread your influence by placing them on the board. You can also sacrifice tokens to be able to cross waters or enter forests. Or you can just sacrifice them in a volcano. At the end of the game, you get victory points for discovered temples and ruins on the map as well as sacrificed tokens.

The layout of the islands changes constantly based on player actions, making Dokmus a dynamic, fast-paced game. So choose your Guardian, make the right sacrifices, and gain the favor of Dokmus!

THE PALACE OF MAD KING LUDWIG

King Ludwig II of Bavaria has called all great architects to design his greatest achievement: a world-renowned palace. Only the best will do! Gorgeous appointments, white stone, surrounded by water, with swans everywhere. Oh, and the Ludwig touch? All the architects must design the palace together. The designer who shows the strongest influence will receive the order to build it.

In The Palace of Mad King Ludwig, each player builds rooms one at a time in a single gigantic palace. As rooms are completed, a moat slowly forms around the outside. Once the ends of the moat connect, the palace is finished, and the player who has contributed the most to the palace wins!

In more detail, this sequel to Castles of Mad King Ludwig shares a few similarities to its predecessor, such as tile-laying, room rewards, and the magic of watching a unique palace take shape through the course of the game, but the gameplay is entirely different, with no auction, a clever endgame timer that graphically builds pressure for players as the moat slowly closes in around the palace, and a twist on resource management with multi-colored swan tokens being used as currency, points, and the keys to new abilities.